Thanks to Sen. Villar, we tackled this in the Senate, thanks to Sen. Villar. And we are hopeful that action points coming from the Committee on Agriculture to get the price of rice under control will be prioritized.

In short, with the current wording of the law, any suspension based on the current law will only affect the January 2019 and possibly the January 2020 price increase.

What we need is a safeguard, Mr. President, which is responsive to the surges in prices and the needs of our countrymen.

In the Senate, in our Senate version, we actually passed a safeguard to suspend excise tax on fuel based on inflation. Ito po iyong probisyon na pinagbotohan nating lahat. However, this provision was removed during TRAIN’s bicameral conference.

In December, the month that we passed TRAIN, inflation was at 2.9. In January, after the TRAIN law was implemented, inflation shot up to 3.4 percent. On February, 3.8 percent, kasama pa rin po iyan sa target range ng Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas,

Pangatlo, suportahan po sana natin itong naihain namin SBN 1798. Again, a very reasonable mechanism which we can use to roll back the price of excise tax on fuel only when the inflation target range is breached.